Category: Urban Geography by Micheal Pacione

• The distribution of population, the organization of production, the structure of social reproduction and the allocation of power.

• Urban geography seeks to explain the distribution of places and the socio-spatial similarities within them.

• 19thC capitalism was “competitive capitalism”, Fordism (mass production, assembly lines, mass consumption) was “mutually beneficial”, now it’s globalized advanced/disorganized capitalism (a shift to services, esp. financial and niche markets) and each phase has changed the urban environment.

• “the new international division of labour in which production is separated geographically from research and development and higher-level management operations”

• The command economy created the “socialist city” of urban industrial development and large estates of public housing whereas there are capitalist tendencies to “suburbanisation and social differentiation”.

• In the global-local nexus, global forces are held to be more powerful but cities modify and embed globalization in local context.

• Globalization has highly uneven impacts and the unevenness is apparent at all levels (booming vs. declining regions, social polarization in one city etc.).

• “In labour market terms globalisation is of relevance only for a small minority of workers with the skills necessary to compete in international labour markets”.

• “Changes in the relative importance of geographic spaces/scales are reflected in changes in the distribution of power among social groups”.

• The “hollowing out of the state thesis” contends that the nation-state has been disempowered relative to the local and supranational.